Steve Hochstadt: We remember a bee sting for a long time. A dozen bee stings change how a person thinks about insects. The daily stings of racism over a lifetime, a generation, several centuries have determined the painful relations between black and white in America.

Jessica Ann Mitchell: Anyone who reads Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest masterpiece on The Atlantic will realize that it goes beyond the traditional conversation about reparations. It’s a beautifully woven story that works towards dismantling collective amnesia.

Tina Dupuy: We’re less willing to talk about or even acknowledge institutionalized racism as a real thing. A word is easy to rally and tweet against: the long-term systematic subjugation of a people based on their skin color is…well…not as easy to solve with a catchy hashtag.

Soya Jung: The model minority myth creates real incentives for remaining silent in the face of anti-black racism, but this obscures the ways that we have benefited from black liberation struggles, and how our struggles intersect.

David Huyssen: Progressives never realized the full potential of the regulatory state to lessen inequality because they were too busy trying to change the behavior of the working class through educational reform, racist moral crusades in low-income neighborhoods, and empathy-building exercises.

Sharon Kyle: So now I’m intrigued and confused. If he was mistaken for the murder suspect, why would he have to cop a plea and why is he behind bars, and why haven’t the bullets been removed and oh yeah – why was he shot in the first place?

Rev. Irene Monroe: With African American servicewomen enlisting in the military at higher rates than their white, Asian and Latina sisters to serve and die for our country, the last thing the military should be squawking about is their hair.

Dave Zirin: By coddling Ms. Sterling, Doc Rivers sends a message that the hounding of thousands of the poorest residents in Los Angeles is a lesser crime than being caught on audio being a racist jackass.

Joe Mathews: The racism heard on the leaked tape may have been news around the country, but Sterling’s discrimination against renters in his apartment buildings, and his anti-black, anti-Mexican, and misogynist views, were well-known facts of Los Angeles life for 30 years.

Kathleen Wallace: We had to get the Donald Sterling tapes. I guess he owns some sort of gladiator type group that participates in large competitive events. I’m not sure on the details. But he doesn’t want the gladiators in the seats; that is for certain.

Randy Shaw: Donald Sterling is a racist who has no business owning an NBA team. Yet he was allowed to do so by the same passive approach to racial bias that has become business as usual in much of the nation, and particularly in the world of sports.

Wellness

Carole Bartolotto: The problem with concluding that GMOs are safe is that the argument for their safety rests solely on animal studies. These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Environmentalism

Walker Foley: Elected officials seem to think there’s only one side of this property rights argument. The people who live in these communities have rights too, but the oil companies seem to have the jump on [the politicians’] side of the fence.